NBC Has Decided To Stop Making Great Comedies Like ‘Community’

This news doesn’t come as a huge surprise. I know someone who is cousins with a guy who is married to a woman who goes to the same Starbucks as someone who works at NBC and who overheard a few months ago that the new management at NBC doesn’t care for the Thursday night comedies on their own network. In particular, they hateCommunity. As in, they don’t get it; they don’t like it; and they think Community — along with Parks and Rec and even The Office — are ruining the once-great-network. That’s why, according to NBC entertainment chief Robert Greenblatt, the network won’t be making shows like that anymore.

What kind of shows can we expect to see in NBC’s future? According to Time Magazine, more shows with monkeys!

“We’re in a transition,” Greenblatt said. “We’re trying to broaden the audience.” And while he called the network’s Thursday roster–and Community, moving to Fridays, “great shows,” he frankly said: “We just can’t get the audience for them. They tend to be a little bit more narrow and more sophisticated than you want for a broad audience.”

This is why they probably passed on The Mindy Project. This is also why they’re going with shows like Animal Practice (which, admittedly, looks kind of cute, mostly because of the cute animals, and also Tyler Labine, and of course, monkeys are awesome!) and The New Normal, their (shoddy) attempt to replicate the success of Modern Family. But also, Guys with Kids, a moronic-looking laugh-track sitcom about the difficulties of stay-at-home Dads (how edgy!). But that’s the point: NBC is not interested in edgy. They’re interesting in ratings, and they haven’t had them in years.

I see their point, of course. The four biggest sitcoms of the last 30 years were all NBC shows, and they were all somewhat broad: Seinfeld, Cheers, The Cosby Show, and Friends. But they were also original for their time: A show about nothing; an after-workplace comedy that dealt with social issues and recurring themes; the first family sitcom to center on an upper class black family; and, of course, Friends, which doesn’t seem novel now because every show is Friends, but a collection of attractive people who did mostly nothing was novel at the time.

Broader comedies do not necessarily mean successful ones, as NBC ought to know from the revolving door of shows they attempted to pair with Seinfeld and Friends over the years: Does anyone remember Stark Raving Mad or Suddenly Susan, or Good Morning, Miami, Inside Schwartz, Perfect Couples, Union Square, Boston Common or even Coupling? No. Because even the ones that weren’t canceled after a season were completely forgettable. I seriously doubt Anthony Clark is raking in the royalties on Boston Common.

I think this is a mistake on NBC’s part because, for all of its failures, with Community and Parks and Rec, NBC is better positioned than some of the other networks for the future. CBS is the highest rated network, but the average age of a CBS viewer is 52! Those old people are dying off. Nielsen ratings will soon be replaced with a more accurate ratings system. Streaming video on laptops, iPads, and smart phones is the future, and no one is going to stream f****king Two and a Half Men or Mike and Molly on their iPads. Who is going to download episodes 2 Broke Girls on iTunes?

You want to get the most bang out of your advertising buck? You need appointment viewing shows, and shows that are talked about on the Internet (Warming Glow is like a second marketing arm for NBC’s Community. No, strike that. NBC doesn’t actually market Community, so we’re their primary marketing team). Television sets should be considered a way for viewers to sample programming that they’ll get invested in enough to watch in other mediums, where we actually have to 1) buy an episode or download it, or 2) watch on the network websites were commercial skipping is not an option, 3) order seasons on DVD (or digital downloads), or 4) watch on Netflix or Amazon, which will pay huge licensing fees for them (in the future, Netflix and Amazon Instant will be the new syndication money).

The point is, broader sitcoms may fetch higher ratings in the short term, but by the time they’re up for syndication in four or five years — if they’re not canceled after four episodes — the entire system will have changed. No one’s going to be watching reruns of Guys with Kids on TNT in five years. We’re going to be watching Dan Harmon’s new sitcom on our Google Glasses. Instead of preparing for that future, NBC is moving backwards.

Of course they don’t care about the future. These decision are being made by old fart CEOs who are going to retire in 5 years. They just have to keep thing afloat long enough to earn that golden parachute. Then NBC will hire another old fart to make decisions, who will retire in five years. Nobody cares about the long term. They need to make money today.
Even despite some recent missteps, at least Netflix and Amazon are thinking about the future.

Yeah NBC’s America’s Got Talent already has an act that is a precursor to “Ow, My Balls!”. Dude named Horse dressed as a superhero getting hit in the balls by bank robbers, and the crowd was loving it. (I swear I only watched AGT for those 5 minutes)

Come on, NBC. You can’t beat CBS at pandering to the lowest common denominator. And, meanwhile, Fox and ABC are just going to pass you on sitcoms that aren’t total crap. And you’ll stay in last place, because you’re being dumb.

I understand that you want better ratings, but there has to be a way to achieve that without going full retard.

I think this is the best write up you’ve ever had. I’m just shocked there isn’t a young, charismatic, mail-room clerk at NBC that can take over someone’s office (while they’re on vacation of course), pretend to be an exec, and make the changes needed.

Actually Javier, NO on HBO. Not everyone can afford the extra cheddar to upgrade their subscription just cause we want to see GOTs. I just wait for the seasons to hit the retail stores. Saves more money in the long run.

In the meantime, I PRAY TO ALL THAT IS HOLY that they don’t cancel Parks and Rec, it’s the only reason I turn to NBC anymore.

NBC used to be my “home town team” of a network. The Cosby Show, Cheers, Night Court, Seinfeld… I defaulted to NBC. Now, its like they’re working as hard as they can to stop me from watching their programming. And at a time where which network a show airs on has never been more irrelevant.

Have you read Warren Littlefield’s book – Top of the Rock? It’s really good. And he worked and got fired from NBC. He points out at the end that the ‘suits’ don’t care about the creative people. They just wanna see numbers and if they don’t see numbers the shows cut. But, what they were doing in the age of ‘must see tv’ was working with the writers, the actors, and the directors to make good tv. Maybe they should bring Littlefield back to NBC and work on their people skills.

I have a friend who cringed when he heard a laugh track, like it was beneath him. Plenty of great shows still have a laugh track, especially shows from the UK. If a show is great, like those old shows, it doesn’t matter if it has the track or not.

If they were in the TV-only business, you have a point; this is long enough to see if the show will catch on. The problem is they’re using an old-fashioned metric, rather than doing the work to demonstrate (to advertisers) what the show’s true viewership is, and/or finding the advertisers that want to hit the particular market they have with the show.

Why did we stop harassing NBC about Community in the first place? Because they gave us the date that was already decided on and kept from public knowledge in order in incite a riot. And then when they give the heave-ho to our beloved Community to Friday night behind laugh-track abortion Whitney, not to mention placed in the hands of new show runners with only a portion of the creative team left standing, and after all that they still manage to stick it to us with a short season with a late start. How do we lose our shit over a brief hiatus and calmly take the buttfucking that is Season 4?

How long until NBC just reboots “Cheers” or “The Cosby Show”? They could give them some 21st century-mandated diversity (a regular black character and white character, respectively) and raunch them up a little (“Two and a Half Men” style), and then least the shitty show they’re so desperate for.

To be fair, “a little bit more narrow and more sophisticated than you want for a broad audience” is a completely spot-on description of Community. Doesn’t narrow/sophisticated by definition imply a smaller demographic? As online viewing becomes more prevalent, I think shows like Community — which honestly never really stood a chance in a primetime network slot — are going to become more like indie movies. And you can’t really complain if an indie movie isn’t opening on 4,000 screens.

So the NBC guy is basically saying they want to sacrifice original shows for numbers. This is sad. Community is the best show I’ve ever watched in such a short period of time and they’re just gonna throw that away? Sad, sad, sad.

It’s style over substance. Smartly written, cleverly acted shows like Community and Parks and Rec don’t appeal to a broader audience because their not meant for the mindless audiences who crave shows like 2 Broke Girls??? There are more to these shows than that, there’s actually something worth watching every week and worth remembering and disucsing with your friends and family. They seriously want to put their money on lesser quality shows and SURPRISE lose more money in the process when they could actually care about the few good shows that are left on the network and give them proper PR and advertising because you know that’s what PR and advertising are for, to sell foregin and sometimes unfamiliar products to people through cunning and devious ways. Much cheaper to give more advertising for a show like Community than to pour money into 3 show that will fail in about 2 or more episodes. Can’t anyone see the writing on the wall at NBC?

I completely disagree with your premise on this. I don’t disagree with the idea I’d like NBC to continue with decent sitcoms instead of crap. However, I do disagree with your idea that “everything is digital and mobile now,man”. I think there is a large portion of the population that want to watch shows on an HD TV and with their surround sound and not on a phone with shitty earbuds or crappy speakers. Most people watch TV shows with friends and family. Who wants to huddle around a 10″ screen? I don’t want my kids that close to me. :-)

I agree with you that many people want to watch shows on their big HD TV’s, however, many people are watching Netflix, Hulu, iTunes, or Google Play TV & Movies on their TV’s. This is what I and everyone I know do. With all the streaming devices that are availabe for so cheap now, it boggles my mind that anyone still watches broadcast TV with commercials taking up more time than the shows do. Streaming is definitely the way eveything is headed.

I personally would pay $60 a month for netflix before I would ever pay for cable, satellite, etc.

Hell, after all the verbal fellatio this site gives Community I’m tempted to actually go watch the first season- I’ve caught bits of a couple episodes but that’s it. Not to mention all the talks/GIFs of Alison Brie and those big ol’ fat titties that are bouncing this way and that.